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Hey /r/syriancivilwar. After my original posts were taken off the sidebar, I realized this list needed some updating for the 2014 year.

For those who want a basic guide to who's who in the Syrian Civil War, here is a list of all factions in the civil war with a short description of their goals, size, and allegiance. For the first part, here is a list of all those affiliated with the Syrian government.

Syrian Government - Ruling government of Syria, currently ruled by Bashar Al-Assad and the Ba'ath Party, a secular socialist party.

Arab Democratic Party - Lebanese Pan-Arab political party with a military wing. Has 1,000-2,000 members.

Arabian National Guard - Civilian armed militia. Reportedly is made up of mercenaries.

Badr Organization - Iraqi conservative political party with a military wing. Holds 8 seats in the Iraqi legislature. Has 10,000-50,000 members.

Hezbollah - Lebanese Shia Islamist political party with a military wing. Holds 12 seats in the Lebanese legislature and 2 in the cabinet. Designated as a terrorist organization by Australia, Canada, the European Union, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Turkey. It has 3,000 armed personnel currently in Syria.

Houthis - Yemeni Zaidi Shia Islamist insurgent group. Has 100,000 members total, but an unknown number are in Syria.

Jaysh al-Muwahhideen - Druze militant group.

Jaysh al-Shabi - Civilian armed militia that is a coalition of both civilians and previous militias. Reportedly has 50,000 members.

Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command - Palestinian Syria-headquartered nationalist organization. Has paramilitary wing known as the Jihad Jibril Brigades. Designated as a terrorist organization by Canada, the European Union, and the United States.

Popular Nasserist Organization - Lebanese Nasserist political party with a military wing. Estimated to have 500-1000 uniformed fighters.

Promised Day Brigades - Iraq-headquartered Shia Islamist insurgent group. Considered to be the successor to the Mahdi Army. Has 5,000 members.

Shabiha - Civilian armed militia lead by members of the Al-Assad family, which is said to have mercenaries in its ranks.

Syrian Social Nationalist Party - Lebanese/Syrian Ultra-nationalist political party with a military wing. Advocates for the annexation of the entire Fertile Crescent to Syria. Holds 4 seats in the Syrian legislature and 2 in the Lebanese legislature. Holds 2 seats in the Syrian cabinet and 1 in the Lebanese cabinet. Has 10,000 members.

Iran - Islamic Republican country ruled by a religious Supreme Leader and an elected President. Designated State Sponsor of Terrorism by the United States.

You list the number of Yemeni Houthis at 100,000 which might accurately describe how many Houthis there are in Yemen, but is there any evidence that any of them are in Syria? They have their own problems, why would they spend their precious capital helping Assad?

What is PFLP's interest in helping Assad? I guess I just don't get it.

This list is really interesting and potentially very useful, but it would be made more so if there was some estimate of how many of each faction was active in the theatre (Syria/Lebanon/Iraq/Jordan/Turkey). As it stands now, it looks like the Greek Nazis and Hezbollah and PFLP and the Houthis all have a similar stake in the fight and that's definitely not the case.

I'm not a supporter of Assad (or anyone in this context), but just because a few countries have designated them State Sponsors of Terrorism doesn't mean that they throw in with every other designated terrorist entity. Considering the way the Assad-side is protecting Shia/Alawite interests, PFLP seems a very unlikely ally. By which I'm implying that it would probably take a pretty impressive incentive from Assad to PFLP for them to throw in with him. For my dollar, being equally contrary to Fatah is not a sufficiently strong reason to go off and gamble fighters' lives in Syria.

For the other stuff, I understand completely. I've been trying to dig the info up myself and it's sparse, unreliable and difficult to translate. I'm hoping other redditors will have some info to fill in the gaps.

Edit: as /u/heyheyitssat has pointed out, what I said about the Houthis is wrong.

I really doubt there is anything more than a trickle of Houthis involved in the conflict. They aren't very fond of Iran or Syria. Officially, they've been categorized as Shia group, but they have more in common with Sunni sects than with Shiites and they know it. They overwhelmingly want nothing to do with either Iran or Syria, and Iran tried to entice them over as an Iranian proxy group in the past and failed. Even while Houthis are at war with Saudis and Yemeni Sunni factions, they won't align with Iran. While they might accept assistance from Iran, the support certainly isn't two ways. They really shouldn't be listed in this chart. There's a lot on that chart that really isn't worth putting on because of how loose their alignments are.

how am I confusing them, aren't Houthis Zaidiyya? This would make them Fivers and very different to the Iranian Shia. What rhetoric was the same? Ashura and Hussein etc?

I'm aware that the Iranian clergy has tried to get influence amongst the Zaidies, but I'd be surprised to see as much influence as you say, but I might be stuck in the 80's and 90's. I'll have to read up on it.

Well isn't that interesting. Is this a general movement within the Zaidiyya sect, or just the Houthis? I can understand the influence of Khomeinism spreading, which would incorporate those items you've mentioned, but to hear about twelver shiites in a region like that is bizarre to me considering what the Zaidiyya were like earlier. Thanks for pointing this out to me

As far as i know its only the tribes in Saadda and north east of Saada. the Zaidies in Sanna,Ibb,Taiz have allied themselves with the government/sunni tribes and don't have the same ties religiously or politically to iran as the tribes in saada do.

what's also interesting about yemen is that the shia clergy claim the rise of the houthies and the unfolding events in syria/iraq are both instrumental steps towards the coming of their savior al-mehdi.

The Srebrenica massacre, also known as the Srebrenica genocide (Bosnian: Genocid u Srebrenici), was the July 1995 killing of more than 8,000 Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims), mainly men and boys, in and around the town of Srebrenica during the Bosnian War. The killing was perpetrated by units of the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) under the command of General Ratko Mladić. The Secretary-General of the United Nations described the mass murder as the worst crime on European soil since the Second World War. A paramilitary unit from Serbia known as the Scorpions, officially part of the Serbian Interior Ministry until 1991, participated in the massacre, along with several hundred Russian and Greek volunteers.

I don't think the NDF really has 100k members. That's what the Syrian government claimed was the target recruitment figure, but I've yet to see anything more detailed than that. I think their real numbers are probably in the tens of thousands (maybe 30k?). Otherwise, I think their presence on the ground would be far more pronounced, considering that at 100k, they'd have 2/3 the manpower of the military.

The NDF is an amalgamation of existing pro-government militias, so that number probably isn't that far off. They are used for holding territory that the SAA has liberated, or to fight in areas that they have knowledge of. Since they live in the regions they have more information about the terrain and such.

100k troops could hold pretty much all the territory the Syrian government currently holds, allowing 150k troops in the normal military to go on way more offensives than they are. Putting the NDF at that strength almost doubles the government's manpower, and we simply don't see that on the ground.

They do use the NDF to hold territory, and to attack in areas that they are familiar with. I would imagine they are mostly a garrison force, allowing the SAA to conduct actual offensives. The NDF is also less trained than the SAA so if they had to use them to fight terrorists they would take more casualties. Its more effective to use the NDF to hold territory while the regular army attacks and defends against rebel attacks. Don't forget that they need to keep a reserve force, and keep troops deployed in areas that aren't necessarily facing direct combat, like the Golan heights.

Definitely. That's exactly what the NDF was designed for, and largely what it's used for. But I just don't see how there could be 100k of them. That would essentially free up the entire army for offensive action, which we just don't see.

Not necessarily, the SAA is still needed to hold the siege of east Ghouta, and to conduct defensive operations in other parts of the country. A significant part of the army is probably involved in offensives, so the NDF is doing their jobs. The Govt just launched a renewed attack into Damascus, and I believe they are taking offensive actions in east Ghouta as well. The Qalamoun mountains have a large amount of troops stationed there as well (someone said 70,000 but Im assuming that includes NDF and Hezbollah).